5 Ways to Strengthen a Kaizen Culture

An episode of KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast

One of our KaiNexus customers suggested that we share audio from our webinar series as podcasts. We've done that! And we're also adding content from our KaiNexus blog, read as audio book-style podcasts.

To view webinar recordings (audio and slides) or to see and download slides, visitwww.kainexus.com/webinars and then click on the webinar library.

More places to listen

Webinar recorded on Sept 10, 2019 -- Presented by Mark Valenti, hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus.
From Ambivalence to Action: Leadership Lessons from Motivational Interviewing
Most people struggle with changing their behavior. Changes seem overwhelming and unreachable. As professionals, we often support, educate, and coach people to continuously improve behavior. You are invited to join your colleagues for a unique webinar that will help you build your change coaching skills and learn new approaches to communication.
In this webinar, you will learn:
The history and common misperceptions about Motivational Interviewing
The 3 crucial elements of behavior change
Successful applications of Motivational Interviewing to real-life workplace situations
Some tips to start applying the concepts
About the Presenter:
Mark Valenti has a background in health systems management, human behavior, and patient activation. He enjoys connecting with partners such as the National Board of Medical Examiners with their China Health Coach program or with Australia’s Flinders University on an innovative approach to patient chronic condition self-management.
He helps others uncover their intrinsic motivation to reach their goals. His unique teaching framework, “Activate Your Audience,” helps speakers better express their messages.new approaches to communication.

This is a preview of the webinar that will be presented on Sept 10 by Mark Valenti.
Click the link to register From Ambivalence to Action: Leadership Lessons from Motivational Interviewing
The same link will work for the recording after Sept 10.
Mark Valenti has a background in health systems management, human behavior, and patient activation. He enjoys connecting with partners such as the National Board of Medical Examiners with their China Health Coach program or with Australia’s Flinders University on an innovative approach to patient chronic condition self-management.
He helps others uncover their intrinsic motivation to reach their goals. His unique teaching framework, “Activate Your Audience,” helps speakers better express their messages.

Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson from KaiNexus once again take questions from our customers and our community.
Topics include:
Hurricane Dorian and Greg's experience in The Bahamas
How to convince top management that improvement is key initiative that must be taken during recession?
What are some standard measurements used for improvement projects that could be rolled up to an overall measurement goal. (i.e. I am the central continuous office for State of Iowa, I would like individual agencies to report measurements of their continuous improvement efforts to me so the State as a whole can report on improvements)
What are the key points which should trigger a kaizen event?
KaiNexicon 2019

Mark Graban talks with Jeff about why he joined KaiNexus, and we also chat about why he moved from software engineering into sales.
This is the third in a new mini series that we're doing with KaiNexus people about why they joined the company.

Mark Graban talks with Clint about why he joined KaiNexus, and we also chat about why he enjoys working in software sales.
This is the second in a new mini series that we're doing with KaiNexus people about why they joined the company.

A webinar presented by Taryn Davis via KaiNexus.
To build Continuous Improvement (CI) as a lifestyle and mindset into the foundation of your organization, don’t be afraid to take risks!
In this webinar, you will learn:
-- What necessary risks look like, and why people are afraid to take them
-- How taking risks allows you to lead people into a cultural shift
-- How to assess your own approach to leading change and encouraging CI mindset
-- How to engage those around you in coming into the change and adopting it themselves
About the Presenter:
Taryn Davis holds her Master's of Library and Information Science from the University of Denver and has a background in Continuous Improvement and Organizational Development. She is a thought pioneer in organizational excellence and seeks to bring people into a space where work is workable for all employees, from the upper echelons of the C-Suite to the line workers on the shop floor. Her passion is engineering processes and products that serve the well-being of the people responsible for and to them.

Mark Graban talks with Matt Banna about why he joined KaiNexus and why he stays with the company. We also chat about continuous improvement and sports a bit. This is the first in a new mini series that we're doing with KaiNexus people about why they joined.

This is a preview of Taryn's webinar, to be presented on August 14 at 1 pm ET, "Burn Your Ships! Generating Momentum for Sustained Change."
To register, visit https://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/culture-of-continuous-improvement/sustain/burn-your-ships/webinar/signup
Taryn Davis holds her Master's of Library and Information Science from the University of Denver and has a background in Continuous Improvement and Organizational Development. She is a thought pioneer in organizational excellence and seeks to bring people into a space where work is workable for all employees, from the upper echelons of the C-Suite to the line workers on the shop floor. Her passion is engineering processes and products that serve the well-being of the people responsible for and to them.

A webinar presented on July 18 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET by Nick Shonsky
In this webinar you will learn:
How to encourage everybody to participate in continuous improvement and how leaders need to support them in this
Why it's critically important to use "incidents" to capture improvement opportunities that might otherwise be lost
What the "pyramid of success" is and how an organization can build commitment and trust
How to align and improve an organization's culture
Nick Shonsky is the Director of Continuous Improvement at The Standard Group.

Episode number eight in our series called “what would you say you do here?” where KaiNexus team members talk about what they do and a passion from outside of work. Today - Mark Graban, Senor Advisor (hosted by Clint Corley).

Presented by Chris Burnham
The Q&A session will be recorded later, to be shared as a separate episode in the podcast.
In this webinar you will learn:
How to navigate the different roles you will have to play as a Continuous Improvement Leader
About the different constituencies that you need to identify and serve as an effective Continuous Improvement Leader
Some countermeasures to the common pitfalls and mistakes that frustrate improvement leaders with sustainment of improvement programs
About the Presenter:
Chris Burnham is a Continuous Improvement Program Manager at Wright Medical, in Memphis.
Chris is a results-oriented, award winning leader who understands how to motivate and lead diverse teams to deliver significant results to the bottom line. He passionate about generating a high level of employee engagement to create leaders at every level of the organization.
Chris has a BS in Criminal Justice (yes, that's right) from Western Carolina University.

We're joined today by Chris Burnham as he gives a bit of a preview of his upcoming webinar on June 5.
Solutions for Sustaining an Improvement Program
June 5 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Chris Burnham, Hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus
In this webinar you will learn:
How to navigate the different roles you will have to play as a Continuous Improvement Leader
About the different constituencies that you need to identify and serve as an effective Continuous Improvement Leader
Some countermeasures to the common pitfalls and mistakes that frustrate improvement leaders with sustainment of improvement programs
About the Presenter:
Chris Burnham is a Continuous Improvement Program Manager at Wright Medical, in Memphis.
Chris is a results-oriented, award winning leader who understands how to motivate and lead diverse teams to deliver significant results to the bottom line. He passionate about generating a high level of employee engagement to create leaders at every level of the organization.
Chris has a BS in Criminal Justice (yes, that's right) from Western Carolina University.

Presented May 16 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Chad Westbrook, AGCO
In this webinar, you'll learn a structured approach to problem-solving using the following tools:
5G – A tool used to describe a loss phenomenon
5W1H – An approach to the revised phenomenon
4M1D – Defining the contributing factors to the revised phenomenon
4M1D Confirmation – Validating the contributing factors
5 Why’s – Root cause and effective countermeasures
Chad Westbrook
Chad Westbrook is a manufacturing engineering manager and AGCO Production System manager at AGCO Corporation. Chad has a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies from Kansas State University.

Recorded May 13, 2019
It's episode 23 of our popular Ask Us Anything webinar series to listen to questions answered by this dynamic duo from KaiNexus' team of continuous improvement experts: Mark Graban & Greg Jacobson.
Questions and topics:
What's a book that you've been reading recently?How do you measure culture in an organization?
What quick-wins can you suggest with respect to culture change? What suggestions for sustaining change in culture needed to embed CI into an organisation? What measures of CI maturity for an organisation?
Here in our company we used to have an engaged work force where every staff is engaged in improvement. As a result the staffs themselves were excited in seeing the positive impact of employee engagement. Nowadays, it is visible that some of that excitement has vanished and am thinking in what way shall I bring the engaged atmosphere back? Please advise.
Where does the culture change start for professional services organisations (law/accounting) e.g. one partner, or all partners - keeping in mind real silos and prominent sub-cultures?
Relative to when KaiNexus first entered the market, how has the market changed with respect to, A) the willingness to adopt technology, B) the acceptance of lean/kaizen by upper management as well as staff, and C) the industries that are now embracing or exploring lean/kaizen?

Please join us on May 16, as KaiNexus and I host a webinar presented by a leader from one of our customers -- Chad Westbrook from AGCO Corporation. Chad is a manufacturing engineering manager and AGCO Production System manager there.
It's titled: A Structured Approach to Problem-Solving.
Click here to register.
In this webinar, you'll learn a structured approach to problem-solving using the following tools:
5G – A tool used to describe a loss phenomenon
5W1H – An approach to the revised phenomenon
4M1D – Defining the contributing factors to the revised phenomenon
4M1D Confirmation – Validating the contributing factors
5 Why’s – Root cause and effective countermeasures
Chad joined me the other day to record a short podcast as a preview.

Episode number seven in our series called “what would you say you do here?” where KaiNexus team members talk about what they do and a passion from outside of work. Today - Maggie Millard, Director of Marketing.

Presented by Roger Chen, hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus
In this webinar, Roger Chen, Executive Director of Lean Transformation at IU Health, shares "lessons from the field" based on his experiences in healthcare (and previously in industry).
You will learn how to identify the phases of the Transformation Continuum and adaptation of rapid improvement and project management methods to standardize efficiency and spread effectiveness -- applicable for any setting!
Roger Chen
Roger Chen is the Executive Director of Lean Transformation at IU Health. He is an organization transformation and change management coach, with a history of quality improvement, operations management and leadership development expertise. He graduated with a B.S. in Electronics from DeVry Institute of Technology in 1986, and earned his International MBA from Nova Southeastern University in 1999.
As a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt, Roger has a unique understanding of the challenges to transition from an existing quality framework to a lean enterprise. He has lead ISO 9001:2000 Certification, Joint Commission compliance, technology teams, and developed materials to teach large organizations nationally and internationally. He has been invited to speak to healthcare institutions in the USA and Latin America on how to integrate lean thinking and leadership development to improve the effectiveness of healthcare operations. His greatest strength is helping others realize their potential while performing their jobs, so they contribute more to their organizations and society while living a better life.
His passion for coaching others to succeed allows him to excel in the development of individuals so they work as a high performing and self-directed team. He believes that lean thinking is critical to solving the long-standing challenges facing our healthcare system.

Webinar by Barry O'Reilly
March 6 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Barry O'Reilly
In this session, you will:
Learn to use a systematic approach to adapting your behaviors and mindset in order to meet the demands of an exponential rate of innovation.
Discover how to let go, reframe, and rethink past successes in order to succeed in the future.
Identify and address the personal obstacles that you need to unlearn.
Challenge your thinking, get outside your comfort zone, and achieve results beyond what you thought was possible.
Effective leadership comes with a large learning curve. In today’s rapidly evolving business climate, this is truer than ever for seasoned leaders and entrepreneurs alike.
Many leaders rely too heavily on past achievements, practices, and ways of thinking to drive positive business results today, but they often need to unlearn those behaviors before they can take a step forward.
Join executive coach Barry O’Reilly as he breaks down a transformative framework that shows leaders how to rethink their strategies, retool their capabilities, and revitalize their businesses for stronger, longer-lasting success.
"Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results" shows leaders and entrepreneurs how to deliberately move away from once-useful mindsets and outdated behaviors that were effective in the past and embrace new behaviors that are effective in a world ripe with emerging technologies and accelerated change.
Barry O'Reilly
Barry O’Reilly is a business advisor, entrepreneur, and author who has pioneered the intersection of business model innovation, product development, organizational design, and culture transformation.
Barry works with business leaders and teams from global organizations that seek to invent the future, not fear it. Every day, Barry helps with many of the world’s leading companies, from disruptive startups to Fortune 500 behemoths, break the vicious cycles that spiral businesses toward death by enabling culture of experimentation and learning to unlock the insights required for better decision making, higher performance and results.
Barry is the author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results, and co-author of the international bestseller Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale—included in the Eric Ries series, and a Harvard Business Review must read for CEOs and business leaders. He is an internationally sought-after speaker, frequent writer and contributor to The Economist, Strategy+Business, and MIT Sloan Management Review.
Barry is faculty at Singularity University, advising and contributing to Singularity’s executive and accelerator programs based in San Francisco, and throughout the globe.
Barry is the founder of ExecCamp, the entrepreneurial experience for executives, and management consultancy Antennae.
His mission is to help purposeful, technology-led businesses innovate at scale.

Pursuing Zero Harm: A Powerful Platform for Embedding Lean Capability
February 27 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Meghan Scanlon
In this webinar, you will learn:
The strategy behind an organization's True North and setting goals at perfect
The power of safety as a value and how to use it to engage people in improving their work
Critical capabilities you need to develop in your organization on a transformational journey of operational excellence
Megan Scanlon
Meghan Scanlon is a principal of Value Capture, LLC. She has nearly 13 years of experience implementing and sustaining transformational improvements in healthcare organizations. Recently, she helped lead Value Capture’s support of the University of Virginia Health System’s Be Safe performance transformation effort. Previously, she spent 9 years as a Sr. Lean Consultant in Johnson & Johnson’s ValuMetrix Services® organization, where she had a proven track record of driving key operational changes in hospitals and healthcare facilities in North America and Europe.
Megan has extensive experience developing hospital employees from the front line to the C-suite as lean practitioners and change agents, working with cross-functional groups to transform their performance and service levels, developing plans to implement change at all levels of an organization, identifying critical performance measures, and creating management tools needed in order to manage and sustain improvements.
She is skilled at designing and delivering effective training sessions focused on process improvement, change management, and leadership. Prior to her work in ValuMetrix Services®, she spent over 3 years internally within Johnson & Johnson, where she attained her Lean Six Sigma Black Belt applying Process Excellence in the areas of Operations, Supply Chain, and IT.

A preview of an upcoming webinar to be presented by Barry O'Reilly on March 6.
http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
Why Great Leaders Must Unlearn to Succeed in Today’s Exponential World
March 6 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Barry O'Reilly
In this session, you will:
Learn to use a systematic approach to adapting your behaviors and mindset in order to meet the demands of an exponential rate of innovation.
Discover how to let go, reframe, and rethink past successes in order to succeed in the future.
Identify and address the personal obstacles that you need to unlearn.
Challenge your thinking, get outside your comfort zone, and achieve results beyond what you thought was possible.
Effective leadership comes with a large learning curve. In today’s rapidly evolving business climate, this is truer than ever for seasoned leaders and entrepreneurs alike.
Many leaders rely too heavily on past achievements, practices, and ways of thinking to drive positive business results today, but they often need to unlearn those behaviors before they can take a step forward.
Join executive coach Barry O’Reilly as he breaks down a transformative framework that shows leaders how to rethink their strategies, retool their capabilities, and revitalize their businesses for stronger, longer-lasting success.
"Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results" shows leaders and entrepreneurs how to deliberately move away from once-useful mindsets and outdated behaviors that were effective in the past and embrace new behaviors that are effective in a world ripe with emerging technologies and accelerated change.
Barry O'Reilly
Barry O’Reilly is a business advisor, entrepreneur, and author who has pioneered the intersection of business model innovation, product development, organizational design, and culture transformation.
Barry works with business leaders and teams from global organizations that seek to invent the future, not fear it. Every day, Barry helps with many of the world’s leading companies, from disruptive startups to Fortune 500 behemoths, break the vicious cycles that spiral businesses toward death by enabling culture of experimentation and learning to unlock the insights required for better decision making, higher performance and results.
Barry is the author of Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results, and co-author of the international bestseller Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale—included in the Eric Ries series, and a Harvard Business Review must read for CEOs and business leaders. He is an internationally sought-after speaker, frequent writer and contributor to The Economist, Strategy+Business, and MIT Sloan Management Review.
Barry is faculty at Singularity University, advising and contributing to Singularity’s executive and accelerator programs based in San Francisco, and throughout the globe.
Barry is the founder of ExecCamp, the entrepreneurial experience for executives, and management consultancy Antennae.
His mission is to help purposeful, technology-led businesses innovate at scale.
Read Barry’s blog at: www.barryoreilly.com
See what he has to say on Twitter: @barryoreilly

The second in our series called "what would you say you do here?" where KaiNexus team members talk about what they do and a passion from outside of work. Today - Clint Corley, Enterprise Account Executive

A preview of an upcoming webinar to be presented by Meghan Scanlon on February 27.
http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
Pursuing Zero Harm: A Powerful Platform for Embedding Lean Capability
February 27 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Meghan Scanlon
In this webinar, you will learn:
The strategy behind an organization's True North and setting goals at perfect
The power of safety as a value and how to use it to engage people in improving their work
Critical capabilities you need to develop in your organization on a transformational journey of operational excellence
Megan Scanlon
Meghan Scanlon is a principal of Value Capture, LLC. She has nearly 13 years of experience implementing and sustaining transformational improvements in healthcare organizations. Recently, she helped lead Value Capture’s support of the University of Virginia Health System’s Be Safe performance transformation effort. Previously, she spent 9 years as a Sr. Lean Consultant in Johnson & Johnson’s ValuMetrix Services® organization, where she had a proven track record of driving key operational changes in hospitals and healthcare facilities in North America and Europe.
Megan has extensive experience developing hospital employees from the front line to the C-suite as lean practitioners and change agents, working with cross-functional groups to transform their performance and service levels, developing plans to implement change at all levels of an organization, identifying critical performance measures, and creating management tools needed in order to manage and sustain improvements.
She is skilled at designing and delivering effective training sessions focused on process improvement, change management, and leadership. Prior to her work in ValuMetrix Services®, she spent over 3 years internally within Johnson & Johnson, where she attained her Lean Six Sigma Black Belt applying Process Excellence in the areas of Operations, Supply Chain, and IT.
Regiser: http://www.kainexus.com/webinars

The first in our series of podcasts inspired by a scene in the movie "Office Space" -- "what would you say... you do here?"
Going first is our CEO and co-founder, Dr. Greg Jacobson -- leading by example. You'll also hear Greg talk about the one weekly habit / activity outside of work that he wouldn't dream of missing.

Mark Graban, of KaiNexus, chats with Jim Huntzinger and Dwayne Butcher of Lean Frontiers about their upcoming events, KataCon 5 and the TWI Summit, being held in Savannah, GA. Learn more at http://www.leanfrontiers.com/skillsweek/

Presented by Jess Orr, Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus
This covers topics including:
- Grasp the basic concepts of the Hoshin Kanri strategy deployment process
- Contrast the Hoshin Kanri approach with other strategy and goal-setting methods
- Learn how to use the Hoshin process for personal goal development and execution
- Gain actionable understanding of how you can apply Hoshin Kanri in your own life
About Jess Orr
Jess is a continuous improvement thinker and practitioner with 10+ years experience in a variety of industries, including automotive at Toyota. She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and two Six Sigma Black Belt certifications.
In her current role, Jess applies her passion for people and processes to empower her fellow employees to make impactful and sustainable improvements. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. Her website and blog can be found at www.yokotenlearning.com.

A preview of an upcoming webinar:
Applying Strategy Deployment to Your Personal Goals
January 10 from 1:00 - 2:00 ET
Presented by Jess Orr
We will cover topics including:
Grasp the basic concepts of the Hoshin Kanri strategy deployment process
Contrast the Hoshin Kanri approach with other other strategy and goal-setting methods
Learn how to use the Hoshin process for personal goal development and execution
Gain actionable understanding of how you can apply Hoshin Kanri in your own life
Jess Orr
Jess is a continuous improvement thinker and practitioner with 10+ years experience in a variety of industries, including automotive at Toyota. She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and two Six Sigma Black Belt certifications.
In her current role, Jess applies her passion for people and processes to empower her fellow employees to make impactful and sustainable improvements. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. Her website and blog can be found at www.yokotenlearning.com.

Webinar: How One Community Hospital is Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Presented by Mike McGowan, Director of Process Excellence at
Marietta Memorial Hospital
Learn how Memorial Health System uses training and five specific roles to build and spread a culture of continuous improvement
Hear what MHS has done well and where we could improve
Discuss the leadership behaviors necessary to accomplish a culture change
Mike McGowan
Director of Process Excellence | Marietta Memorial Hospital
Mike is a graduate of Ohio University with a BS in Zoology. He has worked as an Medical Technologist, Chemistry Supervisor, Laboratory Director, and Senior Director in healthcare for the last 35 years spending most of that time at Marietta Memorial Hospital. He is a lean six sigma black belt and a 2014 graduate of The Ohio State University with a Master’s Degree in Business Operational Excellence. Mike is currently Director of Process Excellence at MMH.

A preview of the upcoming webinar "How One Community Hospital is Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement"
Presented by Mike McGowan, Director of Process Excellence at Marietta Memorial Hospital
Register at https://kainexus.com/webinars

(Sorry for the audio echo problem the first time)
This time, Mark Graban is joined by Jeff Roussel, the VP of Sales for KaiNexus.
They discuss these questions:
What is your favorite book(s) about improvement?
Do you use Kaizen in your personal life outside of work?
How can Kaizen principles be applied to sales? What type of processes
can sales improve?
How do you teach new KaiNexus employees about Kaizen?
What do the most successful KaiNexus customers do differently than
others?
What mistakes do you see most potential customers making when it comes
to Kaizen?
How is KaiNexus really different from a spreadsheet or a sharepoint
site?
Can I just download KaiNexus and start using it?

Presented by Jeff Hunter, President of Jeff Hunter Strategy. Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.
Managing vision and purpose with strategic agility has never been more important for health care leaders in a turbulent and transforming industry. We know that our old mental models and systems for strategic planning are insufficient; yet in our early attempts to translate the lean-based system of hoshin planning into strategy deployment, the essence of strategy has been lost in translation. We struggle with creating unique differentiating value from the patient’s perspective, making strategic choices to reduce organizational overburden, aligning strategic intent in the organization, and deploying initiatives in a manner that accelerates learning.
Patient-Centered Strategy is a learning system that results in better care. A subset of the lean management system, it builds the leadership team’s capability to identify and satisfy patients’ needs in a unique way and deploy that strategy with a process that increases focus, reduces overburden and delivers faster results.
In this webinar, Jeff Hunter, the author of Patient-Centered Strategy, will share lessons that can apply to any industry.
Learning Objectives:
To learn the advantages of this Plan-Do-Study-Adjust strategic management system over the old strategic planning process.
To gain new insights for creating value from the patient’s perspective.
To understand the steps in the iterative process of developing and deploying strategy through rapid learning cycles.
To gain a basic understanding of how the tools in this system work together within the system, so you can practice at home

Mark Graban is joined by Jeff Hunter, President of Jeff Hunter Strategy, to give a preview of his upcoming webinar on September 24.
Register here: https://info.kainexus.com/improvement-disciplines/strategy-deployment/putting-strategy-back-in-strategy-deployment/webinar/signup

TWI and Kata: Skill Patterns to Develop a Culture of Coaching
A webinar presented by Oscar Roche, hosted and moderated by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.
Oscar Roche will discuss how learning and developing the skills provided by the practices of Training within Industry (TWI) and Kata behaviors will develop good coaching practices while simultaneously developing the culture and actual practice of process improvement in your organization.
You will learn:
The basics of TWI and Kata practices
How these skills directly impact an improvement culture.
How the development of TWI and Kata develop coaching skills and practices.
How coaching plays a key role in the developing a lean culture.

Mark Graban of KaiNexus interviews Oscar Roche, one of the two presenters in our upcoming webinar titled:
TWI and Kata: Skill Patterns to Develop a Culture of Coaching
To register, visit https://info.kainexus.com/improvement-disciplines/toyota-kata/twi-and-kata/webinar/signup

Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacbson of KaiNexus answer your questions about sustaining and reinvigorating continuous improvement, Mark's use of "Lean publishing" for his new book, "Measures of Success," whether KaiNexus is still a "startup" or not, and more.
http://www.kainexus.com/webinars

Webinar recording from June 27, 2018.
In this webinar you will:
Uncover one common change management teaching that's flat-out wrong (and what to do instead)
Understand the psychology of change and its relation to Respect for People and Continuous Improvement
Discover the one most important factor to help transform to a Lean culture
Learn 8 practical steps to help teams embrace change more quickly
Jamie Parker
Process + Results Leadership Coaching
Jamie has served in operations management roles for 17 years, including six years practicing Lean. So she knows first-hand the challenges, opportunities, and possibilities organizations face. Today Jamie helps organizations practicing Lean move from employee resistance, inconsistent performance, and improvement stagnation to highly engaged frontline teams solving problems and continuously improving toward organizational goals. Jamie does this by helping organizations transform their leaders using her signature Process + Results Lean Leadership Transformation Model. Jamie has facilitated workshops for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, American Society for Quality, and Fortune 50 executives, in addition to years of coaching and facilitating in her formal management roles. She authored Chapter 6 in the book Practicing Lean and has facilitated webinars and podcasts in partnership with Gemba Academy. Jamie brings passion, fun, and purpose to her work in Lean and leadership.

Mark Graban interviews Jamie V. Parker about her upcoming webinar titled "How to Ease the Pain of Change." The live broadcast will be June 27.
Click here to register to attend or get a recording:
https://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/culture-of-continuous-improvement/how-to-ease-the-pain-of-change/webinar/signup
In this webinar you will:
Uncover one common change management teaching that's flat-out wrong (and what to do instead)
Understand the psychology of change and its relation to Respect for People and Continuous Improvement
Discover the one most important factor to help transform to a Lean culture
Learn 8 practical steps to help teams embrace change more quickly
Jamie Parker
Process + Results Leadership Coaching
Jamie has served in operations management roles for 17 years, including six years practicing Lean. So she knows first-hand the challenges, opportunities, and possibilities organizations face. Today Jamie helps organizations practicing Lean move from employee resistance, inconsistent performance, and improvement stagnation to highly engaged frontline teams solving problems and continuously improving toward organizational goals. Jamie does this by helping organizations transform their leaders using her signature Process + Results Lean Leadership Transformation Model. Jamie has facilitated workshops for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, American Society for Quality, and Fortune 50 executives, in addition to years of coaching and facilitating in her formal management roles. She authored Chapter 6 in the book Practicing Lean and has facilitated webinars and podcasts in partnership with Gemba Academy. Jamie brings passion, fun, and purpose to her work in Lean and leadership.

Using Hoshin Kanri to Align and Coordinate Your Lean Strategy (Webinar)
A webinar hosted by KaiNexus, presented by:
Joanna Omi
Consulting Director | Rona Consulting Group, the Lean practice of Moss Adams
Craig Vercruysse
Consulting Partner | Rona Consulting Group, the Lean practice of Moss Adams
In this webinar you will learn:
How the Hoshin practice evolves over time
When to use an X-Matrix vs. an A3
The relationship between visual management and Hoshin Kanri
The relationship between developing people and the must-do, can’t fail few Hoshins
This is Part 2 of a webinar series on this topic.
Here is Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZx9KdXS7lE
Here is the software demo webinar that they mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cavnch4E_Y4

Presented by Chip Ponsford, DVM
Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus
In this webinar, you will learn:
How to apply Lean thinking in unique settings
Examples of waste and opportunities for improvement in a veterinary office setting
How patients, clients, veterinarians, and staff benefit from Lean
Examples of improvements using Lean methods

With improved audio:
Engaging Leaders and the Baldrige Framework to Advance Excellence
A Look into the Extraordinary Work at Mary Greeley Medical Center
Presented by
Karen Kiel Rosser, MHA, CLSSGB
Vice President of Quality
Mary Greeley Medical Center
Ron Smith, MPA, CLSSGB
Process Improvement Coordinator
Mary Greeley Medical Center
Hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus
In this webinar, you will learn:
How MGMC combines various methodologies to improve
A high-level view of MGMC’s improvement journey
Ways in which MGMC engages leaders in Lean
Tips for increasing the sustainability of improvement work
Lessons learned through a Lean transformation

A Deep Dive into A3 Thinking
March 5 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm ET
Presented by Jess Orr
We will cover topics including:
A3 Thinking: A Quick Refresher
When to Use an A3 vs. Other Tools
How to Engage Others in the Process
Change Management 101
The Hardest Part: Sustaining the Gains
About the Presenter:
Jess Orr
Jess is a continuous improvement thinker and practitioner with 10+ years experience in a variety of industries, including automotive at Toyota. She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and two Six Sigma Black Belt certifications.
In her current role, Jess applies her passion for people and processes to empower her fellow employees to make impactful and sustainable improvements. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. Her website and blog can be found at www.yokotenlearning.com.

How a Lean Adoption Strategy for Public Schools Applies to Everyone
Presented by Harry Kenworthy
In this webinar, you will learn:
Why Lean fails too often
Why organizational “knowledge” undermines Lean
When and how leadership should be engaged
A “Proven Path” strategy for launching a Lean initiative; how two weeks
means all the difference for success
Harry Kenworthy
Harry is Principal and Manager of the Quality and Productivity Improvement Center (QPIC, LLC), a consulting organization he founded in 1984 and has been with full time since 2004. He worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming in 1983-85 on a series of 2 day seminars throughout the US, sponsored by MIT. He has spoken at over 90 conferences on Quality, Productivity, Lean, and Six Sigma, and has been published several magazines including Quality Progress, Purchasing, and Government Finance Review.
He was one of the first practitioners to apply Lean in the Government sector in the mid-90’s, and was a founder of the Connecticut Quality Council and chaired CBIA’s (Connecticut Business and Industry Association) Manufacturing Council. He is the author of the book Lean Government NOW! and previously presented a webinar for KaiNexus titled "Ten Commandments for Lean in Government (and Beyond)." You can learn more about Harry and his work at www.leangovcenter.com.

Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson of KaiNexus take questions from our community
Topics in this episode include:
- Effective gemba visits and observation by leaders
- Finding meaningful alignment in metrics from top to bottom in strategy deployment
- What role can state and national organizations play in advancing LEAN Healthcare initiatives? Is there an opportunity for Nursing organizations and/or unions that's being overlooked?
- We need to move our 5S efforts and auditing to a higher level - something that is effective and can help us advance 5S and get more buy-in from the production workers, supervisors, etc. Any creative, proven suggestions that "work"?
Plus a few short answers on concerts, belts, home states, and more...

How a Lean Adoption Strategy for Public Schools Applies to Everyone
To register, visit http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
Mark Graban is joined by Harry Kenworthy as they chat about his upcoming webinar on February 19.

Presented by Jess Orr in a webinar hosted by KaiNexus on 2/8/18.
In this webinar, you will learn:
Why and when to use the A3 / TBP problem-solving tool
Overview of the 8 components of an A3
Example of how to build an actual A3 using an everyday example
Recommended resources for further learning
For the slides and more, visit www.kainexus.com/webinars

Webinar Preview
Register at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
How to Use A3 Thinking in Everyday Life
February 8 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm ET
Presented by Jess Orr
In this webinar, you will learn:
Why and when to use the A3 / TBP problem-solving tool
Overview of the 8 components of an A3
Example of how to build an actual A3 using an everyday example
Recommended resources for further learning
About the Presenter:
Jess Orr
Jess is a continuous improvement thinker and practitioner with 10+ years experience in a variety of industries, including automotive at Toyota. She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech and 2 Six Sigma Black Belt certifications.
In her current role, Jess applies her passion for people and processes to empower her fellow employees to make impactful and sustainable improvements. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. Her website and blog can be found at www.yokotenlearning.com.

A KaiNexus webinar hosted by Mark Graban.
Presented by Simon Murray and Benny Ausmus of Big Change Agency
In this KaiNexus webinar, you will learn four elements of Lean transformation, including how to:
Create the environment / culture
Bring in structure and systems
Implement and measure the results
Develop the people

This episode is a webinar preview, hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.
To register, visit www.KaiNexus.com/webinars
Presented by Simon Murray and Benny Ausmus of Big Change Agency - December 7, 3 pm EST.
In this webinar, you will learn four elements of Lean transformation, including how to:
- Create the environment / culture
- Bring in structure and systems
- Implement and measure the results
- Develop the people

When Leaders Collaborate: Finding the A-Ha Moments that Lead to Lean Transformation
Presented by... John Toussaint, MD and Paul Pejsa of Catalysis
In this webinar you will:
Discover the three primary benefits of collaborating with peers
Hear real-world examples of lean collaboration results
Create an action plan to enhance your collaborating to drive lean transformation

When Leaders Collaborate: Finding the A-Ha Moments that Lead to Lean Transformation
A webinar preview hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.
We're joined today by the presenters of a webinar we're hosting on November 29. Register at www.kainexus.com/webinars.
Presented by... John Toussaint, MD and Paul Pejsa of Catalysis:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1. Discover the three primary benefits of collaborating with peers
2. Hear real-world examples of lean collaboration results
3. Create an action plan to enhance your collaborating to drive lean transformation

Presented by Craig Vercruysse and Joanna Omi of Rona Consulting Group, which is now part of Moss Adams. Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.
In this webinar you will:
- Learn about the purpose and building blocks of hoshin kanri
- Understand how health care organizations arrive at and use hoshin
- Understand why hoshin is the quintessential PDSA and how experience with small tests of change and A3s create a foundation for hoshin
- Learn about some common rocks in the hoshin road and what can be done about them
Presenters:
Joanna Omi
Consulting Director | Rona Consulting Group, the Lean practice of Moss Adams
Craig Vercruysse
Principal, CEO | Rona Consulting Group, the Lean practice of Moss Adams

Webinar preview with Craig Vercruysse of Rona Consulting Group, the Lean practice of Moss Adams.
Mark Graban, of KaiNexus, interviews Craig, who will be joined by Joanna Omi, to present a webinar on November 14, 2017.
To register, visit http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
The topic is Cascading Strategy Through Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment)
In this webinar you will:
- Learn about the purpose and building blocks of hoshin kanri
- Understand how health care organizations arrive at and use hoshin
- Understand why hoshin is the quintessential PDSA and how experience with small tests of change and A3s create a foundation for hoshin
- Learn about some common rocks in the hoshin road and what can be done about them

In this webinar you will learn:
Four aspects of great lean leadership
Four common themes of great lean processes
Five problems that CI technology solves
Five focus areas to build a world class lean organization
Presenter: Jeff Roussel, KaiNexus VP of Sales
Hosted By: Mark Graban, KaiNexus VP of Innovation and Improvement Servic

Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson answer questions from our KaiNexus Community:
- What's your favorite college football team?
- How to integrate the culture in a change resistant environment?
- How do you deal with culture change? Lean is a new way of doing business. People have to change their ways to become process and problem solvers. Top management has to come from behind their desks to work with the people on the shop floor or gemba. This is a big paradigm shift for any company. Culture change must be addressed before any Lean tools can be used effectively.
- What are some best practices for shifting the culture in an organization?
- How do companies get hundreds or thousands of ideas from their employees annually?
- Is it okay for a leader to apologize? Is it taken as a sign of weakness?
- What is the best way to get a job in the process improvement, Kaizen, or cultural fields?
- What's the next conference you're attending?

In this podcast, Mark Graban interviews Teresa Hay McMahon, the executive director of the Iowa Lean Consortium, as she previews her upcoming webinar:
"Effective Collaboration Across Organizations and Across Industries"
This is being held September 21 at 1 pm EDT. Register at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
In this webinar, you will learn:
* Learn how the Iowa Lean Consortium brings together Lean practitioners from every sector of the economy
* Learn the difference between benchmarking, networking, and collaboration
* Understand why collaboration is critical to continually improving
* Hear examples of benefits gained through presenter’s experiences
* Identify ways to increase collaboration to achieve goals

Mark Graban & Dr. Greg Jacobson from KaiNexus discuss questions from our audience on topics including Lean and the patient experience, shifting from projects to small staff-driven improvements, using huddles for distributed teams, and other CI topics.

Going to the Gemba, or visiting sites in person, is an important part of the improvement process that frequently gets overlooked. Working at a technology company that serves clients in a variety of industries all across the world means that I can not go to the Gemba as easily as the CEO at a hospital or the supervisor at a building site, but I jumped at the chance to go on site to Four Seasons Produce during a trip to visit my mom and sister.

Ensuring the customer is always treated right is the basis from which the Customer Experience team was born. But the concern of a CE team should go far beyond that and focus on making sure the customer is delighted with the product and feels their needs have been heard and met.

If you have visited this blog with any frequency, you may have noticed that we are very passionate about the work we do. Do not get me wrong, it is work and we are in business to sell software, but way beyond that, we really believe in the work that our solution supports.

Written by Kade Jansson, read by Mark Graban
There is power in âbottom-upâ employee improvement, but it doesnât get widely or easily embraced by organizations, meaning missed opportunities for improvement.
That was the topic Mark Graban, our vice president of Improvement & Innovation Services and founder of LeanBlog.org, discussed during a recent KaiNexus webinar, Strength in Numbers: Improving from the Bottom-up, hosted by KaiNexus CEO and co-founder Dr. Greg Jacobson.
In today's post, we'll take a look at the high points of that webinar.

Mark Graban interviews Laura Townsend, co-founder and president of the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation about the webinar that she is giving for us, with two healthcare professionals, and August 30.
To register, go to http://www.KaiNexus.com/webinars and to learn more about the Foundation and their free guides, visit http://www.louisebatz.org.

Written by Becca Millard, read by Mark Graban
A Bowling Chart is a simple, visual way to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or policy deployment objectives, letting you compare your actual metrics to your targets and goals. The term âBowling Chartâ is derived from the chartâs similarity to the appearance of a bowling scorecard, although thereâs often 12 months in this type of Bowling Chart instead of ten frames when weâre bowling.

Written by Jake Sussman, read by Mark Graban
If youâve watched our recent webinar Taking Improvement Boards Digital: How Leading Companies are Improving Visual Management, or been reading our posts about the same, you would have heard the term âKanban boardâ used. While itâs great to hear that KaiNexus software supports digital Kanban boards, itâs even better if you have a clear understanding what a Kanban board is, and how it can help you on your continuous improvement journey. Hereâs the rundown:
What is Kanban?
Weâve written a longer primer on Kanban here, but the important thing to know is that it is a visual system for monitoring the flow of work from the start, as we build a backlog, move work into in-process (while hopefully limiting WIP), and completing this work.
Visualization works so well because our brains interpret visual information far faster than data or text. By reducing complex material down to visual components and putting them together, managers and staff can get an overview of the whole workflow system in seconds rather than the hours it might take to track down information in every area, work through it, and synthesize it down into conclusions that can be shared.

In this episode, Dr. Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban answer questions from our KaiNexus community:
1) After initial Lean and continuous improvement training, what do we do next? What should be the role of leaders?
2) What are some proven strategies to get staff to suggest or come up with projects?
3) When you encounter an environment where the bulk of participants are resistant to tools that formalize the change process...what tips or tricks have you seen work that can be used to get the champions to bring the doubters along?
4) Regarding Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedures - what should be included that assures the effectiveness and sustainability of organization-wide continuous improvement initiatives?
5) Non-profit organizations barely have the resource to invest on lean training. Many who see the importance use their own resources and take their lean journey at their own expense. Any suggestions from the group?
6) How can I demonstrate the benefits of implementing KAINEXUS Process Improvement strategies to improve patient flow through the ED and the rest of the Hospital, so that Hospital Administrators will hear and understand?

A webinar hosted by KaiNexus and presented by Warren Stokes, Director of Process Improvement at HonorHealth, a health system in Arizona.
In this webinar, you'll learn:
How to leverage the intellectual capital and experience of your frontline employees first
To not overcomplicate your Lean improvement with too much of the scientific and not enough of the practical
Why it’s important to build trust and support for continuous improvement
How Lean best fits into a larger, long-term continuous improvement strategy in a way that avoids succumbing to short-term pressures
How leadership and a Lean team can create and empower laser-focused energy,

In talking with business leaders over the years, we have learned that Gemba Walks are a bit like eating better and getting more exercise. Everyone agrees that they are good for you, but many folks do not get around to them. It is not that these leaders are lazy or unmotivated - quite the opposite. They are often busy responding to the crisis of the day and juggling multiple pressing priorities. Gemba Walks get pushed down to the bottom of the list because they are not associated with a deadline or urgent deliverable. But in an ironic twist, one of the best ways to ensure that you have time to visit the Gemba is to spend more time visiting the Gemba.

Mark Graban interviews Warren Stokes to get a preview of his upcoming webinar on August 10:
How to Leverage Lean for Long-Term Success (Under Short-Term Pressures)
In this webinar, you'll learn:
How to leverage the intellectual capital and experience of your frontline employees first
To not overcomplicate your Lean improvement with too much of the scientific and not enough of the practical
Why itâs important to build trust and support for continuous improvement
How Lean best fits into a larger, long-term continuous improvement strategy in a way that avoids succumbing to short-term pressures
How leadership and a Lean team can create and empower laser-focused energy

Organizations that subscribe to the Lean or Six Sigma business methodology, and others that are devoted to continuous improvement, often use a host of visual management tools to achieve consistency and introduce positive change. Kanban signs, huddle boards, and value stream maps are all very popular and effective. Process control charts are another valuable visual management tool for recognizing and reacting to process variation.

Webinar presented by Mark Graban on July 27, 2017.
In this webinar, Mark Graban talks about the power of "bottom up" employee improvement and also explores some questions about why what's logically true (bottom up improvement is highly impactful) doesn't get widely or easily embraced by organizations.

In our Customer Spotlight, we interview to Lindsey Booty and LeaAnn Teague of Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Louisiana.
Our VP of Improvement and Innovation Services, Mark Graban, talks to them about their approach to improvement and, also, how KaiNexus has supported those efforts.

A preview of Mark's webinar on July 27:
- What's the focus of the webinar?
- How do we know bottom-up improvement is powerful?
- Why is bottom up improvement not typically seen?
- So what's necessary to help?

We recently had an interesting conversation with a newly minted director of quality improvement in a regional hospital. The position is new, but she has years of experience implementing continuous quality improvement (CQI) programs. The first thing she realized that she needed was CQI software to support the initiative. She made the request for budget to the CFO who told her that fortunately, the hospital already had project management software and that she was free to use it to manage improvement projects.

It may seem odd for a company that sells process improvement software to declare that not every company is ready to buy it. We do like partnering with new customers, after all. But the thing is, we only want happy customers. And happy customers are organizations that have successful process improvement software rollouts, good adoption of the solution, and measurable impacts on key business metrics as a result.

Organizations all over the world, in almost every industry, are turning to continuous improvement software to solve their most challenging issues. The most successful of these Lean organizations are aware that they need 5 elements to succeed in creating an improvement culture: bottom-up improvement, top-down improvement, strategy deployment, coaching, and visual management.
That sounds like a lot to manage in excel at all at once, doesnât it?
So how do these Lean organizations pull it off?

Most people will only be involved in a Lean software implementation once or maybe a few times. We help companies with improvement software deployment every single day. Because we have been around the block many times, we have seen what leads to success and which mistakes should be avoided at all costs. We are happy to share what we’ve learned.

A growing number of construction firms are embracing the Lean methodology that emphasizes maximizing value for the customer while minimizing waste. The approach is simple and attractive in an industry where budgets, timeframes, and safety are all critical. But the Lean approach to project delivery is very different than traditional construction methods, making proper execution of the philosophy and techniques difficult to implement.

Mark Graban and Greg Jacobson, MD from KaiNexus answer questions in this video webinar:
How can you implement Lean without scaring people with change and Japanese concepts and language?
When will Management realize that the employee on the front line is closest to the issue and concerns and usually has be best ideas?
Any tips on Lean and Kaizen as applied to parenting?
We're interested in KaiNexus, but still trying to figure out if it's best to start with a physical board for the team and then use KaiNexus for tracking and sharing... or should we do everything in KaiNexus?
Is it necessary to make improvement mandatory? To set a goal for how many projects people should be involved in? It seems like people won't participate unless we make it mandatory.

There is a strong trend in organizations these days to apply improvement tools and techniques that originated on the manufacturing floor to other parts of the organization and other industries entirely. That is because the basis of these tools and the approach are not really related to manufacturing at all. Rather, they are about control, organizational alignment, and efficiency. What organization does not need more of those things?

When you started on your improvement journey, you may not realize it, but you actually already made a technology decision. I bet you probably managed the work in spreadsheets and bulletin boards - these are technology! Now that you are starting to engage more people in it, though, I bet that you are finding that it is hard to get the visibility you need to spread that culture efficiently and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Your technology needs an upgrade.
You could theoretically use Dropbox and a folder structure to manage critical components of your business - say, for example, your medical records or accounting transactions - but I promise you, no one is putting their organizations at risk like that. They use software built specifically for the business issue you are dealing with.
It continues to baffle me that organizations do not take improvement software as seriously as they take their accounting platform or their medical records system.

Communication and organization are the keys to the success of Hoshin Kanri because managing long-term strategy, short-term goals, and daily improvement activities can be a huge challenge, especially if you have many people involved in the effort. For years, organizations have relied on tools such as complicated spreadsheets, email threads, file sharing systems, and even paper boards to track and manage the strategy, but these passive systems often fail to provide the support necessary to make lasting progress. They are time-consuming, rarely kept up-to-date, and ineffective at driving activity.

What are the traits you look for when you hire new employees? If you are like most people, you look for employees that are intelligent, capable, problem solvers who take the initiative to get stuff done and do it well. It is a shame that these same people who got hired for their mental faculties then so commonly get relegated to being a pawn in the corporate machine, with no autonomy or power to improve the business through their work.

Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is one of those things like a snow cone. It is something that pretty much everyone can agree is awesome. Who would not want it? Yet for some reason, not every organization has a plan for how to achieve CQI. Fewer still, have systems and processes in place to support it, and many that try never successfully reach their goals.

We do not think that companies should deploy process improvement software unless they have a clearly defined vision of what success looks like. Every company is trying to achieve something unique, of course, but we find some common goals for process improvement software among the most prepared organizations we encounter. Here are a few.

It looks simple at first, and a quick Google search will tell you what you need to get started - a way to capture ideas, a way to collaborate, leadership behaviors - there is so much content out there on this topic, it is easy to feel like an expert. Then, when you struggle to spread your improvement culture, you are left with a bag of moldy seeds wondering what went wrong.

The beginning of summer must be a good time for Kaizen events because we have been getting a lot of questions about them lately. We thought we would take a few minutes to answer the ones we hear most often.

Taiichi Ohno also said that Kaizen is about changing the way things are. If you assume that things are all right the way they are, you cannot do Kaizen. So, change something. Yes, there is some effort and time involved in implementing Standard Work, but the upside is enormous. If you are not using it, that may be the most important thing to change.

Whether you are new to huddle boards or have decided it’s time to move yours from the wall into the cloud, we offer you congratulations. Digital huddle boards are an excellent way to organize and track improvement projects. They have the potential to increase the number of completed improvements and to help you prove how valuable this effort is to the organization.

Whenever I read a book, I try to apply myself to the situations discussed. How does this affect my personal life? How can I apply what I learned to my work at KaiNexus? Oftentimes, this can be difficult depending on the subject. The Devil In The White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larsen may not be as applicable to me as Start With Why by Simon Sinek (but both are highly recommended!).
Reading the behind the scenes of Game 7 of the World Series and hearing about some of the lesser-known details of his career made for a pretty fascinating read. However, the passage at the top of page 231 struck a chord with me.

Gemba walks are an increasingly popular management technique. By visiting the place where work is done, leaders gain valuable insight into the flow of value through the organization and often uncover opportunities for improvement and learn new ways to support employees. The approach is a collaborative one, with employees providing details about what is done and why. Great results depend on thoughtful planning, execution, and follow-up. Here are the most important steps you can take to ensure that your next Gemba walk is successful.

Giving staff members a larger voice and the ability to solve their own problems increases productivity, increases the sense of responsibility in the organization, and increases their satisfaction in daily tasks. Giving team members a stake in how their work also increases the intrinsic motivation that organizations look for in culture of improvement or collective responsibility.

Whether you work in healthcare, politics, construction, or really just about any industry, providing Service Excellence is particularly important for your business.
Part of the problem is false beliefs that creativity happens like flashes of inspiration that come out of nowhere like lightning bolts, or that creativity is something that happens to other people.

We get the chance to chat with folks who are interested in implementing strategy deployment software within their organizations almost every day. Most of the people we talk to really understand the need for this kind of solution and how it can benefit their company. Convincing others, however, can be a challenge.

KaiNexus recently invited The Toyota Way to Service Excellence author Karyn Ross to speak to our own Mark Graban, about How to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence. Ross is a purpose-driven consultant and Lean coach at karynrossconsulting.com. Focused specifically on services, Karyn has worked with small, medium, and large organizations in sectors as diverse as insurance, financial services, HR, transportation, and retail. Using her unique Practical Creativity (TM) approach, Karyn teaches creativity techniques in combination with Toyota Way / Lean practices to help businesses retain current customers and attract new ones.

I doubt that you are still using index cards to organize your contacts, but your approach to huddle boards may be just as outdated. In the same way that an electronic contact database has a ton of advantages over a Rolodex, digital huddle boards offer valuable benefits that paper notes pinned to a poster on the wall. Here are the top reasons to consider an upgrade.

I doubt that you are still using index cards to organize your contacts, but your approach to huddle boards may be just as outdated. In the same way that an electronic contact database has a ton of advantages over a Rolodex, digital huddle boards offer valuable benefits that paper notes pinned to a poster on the wall. Here are the top reasons to consider an upgrade.

When you're thinking about rolling out Strategy Deployment in your organization, it can be intimidating to know exactly where to start, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to set yourself up for success right from the beginning. I've recently written an eBook that covers these questions, as well as information about the software you need to enable Strategy Deployment, that you can download on our blog at blog.kainexus.com.

Obviously, all of us here at KaiNexus are huge fans of continuous improvement. But I am not going to lie, I find the name to be a bit of a problem. It is clear, succinct, and meaningful, so what could be the matter?

We get the chance to chat with a lot of frontline employees, managers, and executive leaders about all aspects of continuous improvement. We love to learn about how organizations are using the techniques and tools of Lean and other methodologies to improve results and reach their most important business goals. Gemba Walks are a practice that comes up quite a bit. Some leaders find them to be incredibly effective and welcomed by managers and staff alike, while others find them to be a chore with disappointing results.

Last month, our friends Tania Lyon and David Yeager presented at the Carnegie Foundation Summit on Lean in Education on their research and experience in spreading a culture of continuous improvement. Tania Lyon has been a KaiNexus customer for the last couple of years, and has led her team to accomplish some astounding results in her position as Director of Organizational Process Improvement. David Yeager is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and a Faculty Research Associate at UT Austin and will be presenting his research at the KaiNexus User Conference later this year.

In this podcast, Mark Graban and Dr. Greg Jacobson chat about their upcoming webinar on May 16 -- learn more at http://kainexus.com/webinars
Taking Improvement Boards Digital: How Leading Companies are Improving Visual Management
In this webinar you will learn:
Why people use improvement boards
Challenges to using physical boards
How digital boards solve these challenges
Examples of effective digital boards
Using boards to manage strategy deployment

A popular ice breaker in business meetings these days is 3 Truths and 1 Lie. Each person says three true things about themselves and one made up thing and everyone tries to guess which is the lie.
We thought that 10 truths and 1 lie would be a good way to introduce Standard Work. Can you guess which is which?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are probably aware by now that we produce a lot of educational material about continuous improvement methodologies, leadership, engagement strategies, and how to spread an improvement culture.
Today we will look at an excerpt from our latest eBook, An Introduction to Continuous Improvement Software.

We expect that the best organizations are continuously improving. We hope they are using Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and other methodologies to engage everybody in continually reinventing and improving what they do and how they do it.

The practice of Kaizen along with the Six Sigma and Lean business process methodologies has been wide spread in manufacturing for decades. More recently other sectors have realized that the practices and principles of Kaizen can accelerate improvement in almost any organization. Like manufacturers, leaders in every industry from construction to higher education are leveraging Kaizen software to support and perfect their efforts to execute on more opportunities for improvement. For those who are not yet familiar with Kaizen software, we have put together this broad introduction.

We have noticed a theme to many of the conversations that weâve been having with clients and at the events we have attended lately. Lots of folks have questions about the concept of Continuous Quality Improvement or CQI for short. We have put together some answers to the questions we are asked most often and even a few that people do not ask, but they really should.

We are not saying that your CEO needs shave his or her head, but depending on your improvement goals (and your CEOs attachment to their locks) it might be a great idea!
To explain, back in 2016 KaiNexus set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, known as a BHAG. A BHAG is a daunting, clear, and compelling goal an organization sets, which should not be financially driven, but it should be something that if the organization achieves it, would really move the needle forward and indicate the organization has accomplished something.

Donald J. Wheeler, PhD is a world-renown expert in continuous improvement, having worked with W. Edwards Deming and later writing the classic book Understanding Variation.
Wheeler once wrote and said, Statistical Process Control is, at its heart, about getting the most from your processes. It is about the continual improvement of processes and outcomes. And it is, first and foremost, a way of thinking... with some tools attached.

I was at a neighborhood gathering the other day when I ran into an old friend who I had not seen in years. She asked me what I had been up to, so I told her a bit about my role at KaiNexus and mentioned that we have software that helps companies achieve success with business methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma. She said that she figured they just used spreadsheets and email.

Standard work is a term that practitioners of a continuous improvement methodology such as Lean, Kaizen or Six Sigma have probably heard before. It is simply a detailed written description of the most efficient and effective way known to complete a particular process or task, safely, with the highest quality result.

Webinar presented by Kevin Meyer, hosted by Mark Graban.
In this webinar you will learn:
The fascinating overlap between Lean and Zen.
How to use that overlap to calm everyday chaos.
How to become more productive by identifying and optimizing the best part of your day.
How to grow as a person - and a leader.
About the Host:
Kevin Meyer is a co-founder and partner at Gemba Academy. He has over 30 years of manufacturing leadership experience in the automotive lighting, telecom electronics, and medical device industries. He has been responsible for lean transformations at Sylvania, Abbott Laboratories, Newport Corporation, and most recently as President of Specialty Silicone Fabricators.
He guest lectures on business, manufacturing, and leadership topics at his alma mater Rensselaer as well as CalPoly.
Kevin is on the board of directors of two technology companies and two regional public policy councils, and actively supports early stage entrepreneurship by investing with SLO Seed Ventures and mentoring startups at the SLO HotHouse.

During a Gemba walk, supervisors and leaders go to the place where work is done (the Gemba). They observe (not fix) processes and activities and ask questions that will help lead to future improvements. Why? - is certainly an important question, but it is by no means the only one. We have put together a list of other questions that may be useful, especially if you are new to Gemba walks or if you are taking a look at a process for the first time.

Kevin Meyer from Gemba Academy, author of the book "The Simple Leader" will be giving a webinar for KaiNexus on April 25.
Register at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
The title is "Personal Leadership at the Nexus of Lean and Zen." We hope you can join us or check out the recording.

Keep doing what you are doing and you are going to get what you are getting. Few would argue that the logic rings true, but unfortunately, this idea is often ignored when it comes to strategic business planning. Executives huddle in a room, analyze budgets, set revenue goals, and predict great success without fundamentally changing the conditions that led to the business results they are experiencing today. A year later, or a quarter later, everyone wonders why nothing has changed.

The DMAIC technique is simple, yet powerful. It brings structure to the improvement process and helps teams explore potential solutions, decide a course of action, and implement process controls in short order.
Trying any new improvement strategy can be intimidating, so we thought it would be helpful to break down all the details of DMAIC so that you can give it a try with confidence.

In our first KaiNexus "customer spotlight," Mark Graban talks with Ben Whitaker, Director, Business Process Management at Mohawk Fine Papers. We talk about their use of KaiNexus, how they are changing the culture, and more.

KaiNexus has a webinar series called Ask Us Anything, in which our CEO and Co-founder Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban, our Vice-President of Improvement & Innovation Services and founder of LeanBlog.org, join forces to answer questions KaiNexus webinar listeners ask. In this post, we will look at two questions and answers from a recent webinar.

I have been debating with myself over whether to use the word conceptions or misconceptions in this post. I decided to go with conceptions because I do not know whether these frequently held beliefs are accurate or not within your organization. We do know from countless conversations with our customers that they are devastating to a culture of improvement whether they are true or not. Here is how you can combat them, in either case.

Any good continuous improvement platform empowers you to improve in any way you see fit, rather than forcing you to subscribe to one particular methodology. That means people use the software to support a ton of different types of improvement work - including improvement-related certification classes.

If you’re using the Six Sigma methodology to create change and sustain continuous improvement in your organization, you’re likely using, or will use, DMAIC (pronounced "de-may-ick"). DMAIC is an acronym that outlines a framework for identifying and challenging sources of waste, poor quality, and inefficient processes and then looking for opportunities for improvement.
DMAIC is best used when an existing product or process fails to meet performance expectations or otherwise leaves customers unsatisfied. You can read more about what DMAIC is and about steps involved on our blog, but for those of you who are finding DMAIC challenging you may want to check your organization isn’t making these five big DMAIC mistakes.

Tracking the impact of a continuous improvement program is one of the most difficult challenges that an incoming consultant may face. As difficult as tracking impact is, it is also one of the most important metrics to measure. Organization leaders want to see a return on their investment of a consultant and being able to capture the results of the improvement program is the easiest way to do so.

Behind every improvement technique and tool, there is a winning spirit. There is no downside to the ideas that processes can always be made better and that positive change is the business of everyone. But today we are going to focus on one common improvement tool, the idea board, and make the case that there is a better way. After all, why would the force of Kaizen not be applied to improvement itself?

Gemba walks can be one of the most enjoyable and powerful learning opportunities for leaders, but only if they are done in a way that promotes learning and avoids creating tension between managers and frontline staff.
I have written about Gemba walks before, but I wanted to delve deeper into what NOT to do on Gemba walks. If your Gemba walks aren’t going as well as hoped, or if they are causing tension on the front lines, be sure you are not making any of these mistakes:

Hosted by KaiNexus and Mark Graban
In this webinar, you will learn:
- What creativity is (and isn't) and what service excellence is (and isn't)
- Why changing behavior first leads to mindset changes, not the other way around!
- How to develop creative problem solving and critical thinking skills in daily 15 min coaching sessions
- How using creativity combined with The Toyota Way to Service Excellence principles delivers peak service experiences for customers
About the Presenter:
An experienced lean consultant, coach and practitioner, Karyn is the coauthor, with Jeff Liker, of the Shingo Award-winning The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations. Focused specifically on services, Karyn has worked with small, medium and large organizations in sectors as diverse as insurance, financial services, HR, transportation and retail. Using her unique Practical Creativity(TM) approach, Karyn teaches people how to combine creativity with Toyota Way/lean practices to ensure that businesses continuously deliver the peak service experiences that retain current customers and attract new ones.
Karyn is a practicing artist, with an MFA in Sculpture and lives in Naperville, Illinois with her family.

As you can probably tell from reading this blog or others about the Lean approach to business management, most of what is written about the subject is applied to manufacturing and healthcare organizations. We know, however, that its application is not that limited. We have clients in technology, education, agriculture, professional services, and more.
One sector that is starting to embrace the Lean approach with increasing enthusiasm is construction. We have been delighted to see a new level of interest from leaders in the field. We thought it might be useful to share some of the questions we get asked most often about Lean construction.

March madness is in full swing, and we are not going to lie. We have basketball on the brain. The level of talent and dedication that players display even when they do not win the game is truly inspiring. As spectators, we see the game. What we do not see are the countless hours of practice, the sacrifice, the workouts, the strategy sessions, and all of the other hard work that goes into competing at this level. We are impressed.
A Kaizen event is a bit like a basketball game. In order to win in basketball, there are some things you need to do during the game, but also a bunch of stuff that needs to happen off the court. The same is true for completing a successful Kaizen event. You must strive for great execution while the event is in progress, but much of the work happens before it begins and after it ends. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind if you want your next event to be as easy as an uncontested layup.

It is important in any discussion of standard work to talk about what it is not, as a poor interpretation could mean results that inhibit improvement rather than supporting it. Leaders have an obligation to promote standard work in the correct way, so that staff will both respect the need for it and invest themselves in improving it.

Karen and David are the founders of Gimbal Canada Inc, a Lean practice management advisory firm that specializes in the legal industry. For the last three years or so, Gimbal has been working with law firms across North America on improving the way lawyers deliver legal services. They teach, write, and speak about Lean and the benefits of legal process improvement for law firms and in-house legal departments, and they work directly with their clients on improvement projects that focus on legal processes, as well as the business and administrative processes that support the work of lawyers.
The question that comes up is, Why is innovation such a hot topic in law?

Lean organizations target 8 types of waste in an effort to create the perfect flow of value to the customer. Ideally, no resources are used unnecessarily and every task contributes something for which customers are willing to pay. Of course, achieving this is much more challenging than just saying it. That is why a set of Lean tools and techniques have been developed to aid Leaders who embark on this journey. We would argue that software designed to support this type of improvement is crucial to success.

In the United States, multiple estimates say over 100,000 people die each year in hospitals as a result of medical errors. There are an estimated 1.7 million care-associated infections each year and adverse medication events cause over 750,000 injuries and deaths per year. Beyond the human cost, if you look at the financial cost of these mistakes, we are looking at almost $20 billion annually.

Lean organizations target 8 types of waste in an effort to create the perfect flow of value to the customer. Ideally, no resources are used unnecessarily and every task contributes something for which customers are willing to pay. Of course, achieving this is much more challenging than just saying it. That is why a set of Lean tools and techniques have been developed to aid Leaders who embark on this journey. We would argue that software designed to support this type of improvement is crucial to success.

When we write the improvement cycle as linear, we start at P, which places the emphasis on the plan (noun) you intend to implement. But if P is understood to mean planning (verb), the emphasis is on first constructing a plan. Thinking of the P in this way, it becomes clear that you must first understand the current circumstances and make an honest appraisal of what can be done, given the way your organization works.
In other words, when the cycle starts at Study, your Planning is much more likely to result in an ideal change - one that works and is workable to both address the issue at hand and be feasible given the way work is done.
However, this leads to the question how much Planning should you do?

Gemba walks give leaders the opportunity to observe the processes that add value in their natural habitat. After all, talking about what happens on a factory floor or an emergency room in a board room is very different than observing work at the source.
But like any other continuous improvement technique, the devil is in the details when it comes to Gemba walks. The best of intentions can be undermined by mistakes in execution. Hereâs how a good Gemba Walk can go wrong.

Continuous Improvement in Education has been rapidly growing over the past couple years. Jake Sussman has recently talked about continuous improvement in higher education at KaiNexus, but one group that deserves mention is the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered by Congress in 1906, the Carnegie Foundation is an independent policy and research center that focuses on every level of education. The Carnegie Foundation is committed to developing a network of ideas, individuals, and institutions to advance teaching and learning.
These stated missions and goals also mean that the Carnegie Foundation is at the forefront of Continuous Improvement in Education; they even hold an annual conference on Improvement in Education. This year’s conference is taking place this year in San Francisco, March 27th-29th.

Before they started using KaiNexus, JC Cannistraro used their own internal continuous improvement program, in which they tracked improvements with Google Sheets, but at some point this program went dead, flatlining in the number of improvements adopted over time. To combat this, they started using 5S training to make new improvements. Cannistraro stressed that the important thing 5S gave their teams a shared understanding of what they tried to improve, which in turn allowed them to see more opportunities for improvement. In fact, the result was too many opportunities to manage and soon a better solution was needed.

The education system in America faces an enormously complex set of challenges. Educators find themselves faced with community and government pressure to improve student performance, but often without corresponding funding or influence over policies and expectations. In short, our school administrations and teachers are being asked to do more with less. That is why it is not surprising to find that education professionals are turning to a business management approach that has proven very effective in other sectors such as manufacturing and healthcare.

Mark Graban interviews Karyn Ross, coauthor, with Jeff Liker, of the Shingo Award-winning "The Toyota Way to Service Excellence: Lean Transformation in Service Organizations."
Karyn is doing a webinar on March 28 titled "How to Coach for Creativity & Service Excellence." To register, visit www.kainexus.com/webinars.

I was not up-to-speed on continuous improvement, or Lean, or any of those concepts. So I was learning with the organization, and basically they said, we are doing Lean, and here are the tools, go do it. Tools work, people use them, we do not really have a lot of overall vision or direction.

Those who have been working in and around construction for quite some time will know the construction industry has suffered deeply from a lack of innovation and systems improvement for as long as most can remember.

Here at KaiNexus, we believe that each person in our company plays a critical role in the success of our company - and our customers. We’ve grown rapidly over the past couple of years, but we’re still a small team, making each person’s contributions critical.
When most people think of a tech startup, they envision a bunch of dudes in the break room wearing virtual reality headsets chugging Red Bull at 3 am. This stereotypical version of a tech startup exists somewhere, but that’s not us.
We have no Foosball table, we don’t drink energy drinks all day (well, unless you count good coffee and tea), and we don’t sit around playing video games and high-fiving.

All my life, I have been an avid basketball fan. In my younger days, some would say I was a decent player, though many moons have passed since then. Every time we stepped on the court, one of my team’s goals was to get into a rhythm.
The dictionary definition of rhythm is a regular repeated pattern of beats, sounds, activity, or movements. For any non-sports aficionado reading this, imagine a group of individuals working together to achieve a common goal. Each person in this group is moving fluidly through their individual responsibilities, and their entire activities are synced together in unison; much like a choir singing beautiful four-part harmony.

The best part about being involved in a Lean Community is the community - and we have been thrilled to discover a thriving Lean community here in our own backyard in Austin, Texas.
KaiNexus is part of the Austin branch of Lean Construction Institute. Lean Construction Institute (LCI) is a non-profit organization, founded in 1997. The Institute operates as a catalyst to transform the industry through Lean project delivery using an operating system centered on a common language, fundamental principles, and basic practices.

If you are considering investing in strategy deployment software to support your organization's efforts to achieve your most important objectives, we congratulate you. Too many leaders talk a big game when it comes to strategy, but fail to provide the company with the tools and information necessary to effectively carry it out. (Hereâs a good example of what can go wrong.)
There are a lot of systems out there that could be sold as a strategy deployment solution. You can find everything from glorified spreadsheets to purpose-built improvement platforms. We have had the chance to chat with lots of folks who have been through the selection and implementation process, so we thought it would be useful to share a few of the features that make all of the difference.

If you are considering investing in strategy deployment software to support your organization's efforts to achieve your most important objectives, we congratulate you. Too many leaders talk a big game when it comes to strategy, but fail to provide the company with the tools and information necessary to effectively carry it out. (Hereâs a good example of what can go wrong.)
There are a lot of systems out there that could be sold as a strategy deployment solution. You can find everything from glorified spreadsheets to purpose-built improvement platforms. We have had the chance to chat with lots of folks who have been through the selection and implementation process, so we thought it would be useful to share a few of the features that make all of the difference.

n improvement culture cannot be created with a âdrop and growâ approach. A continuous improvement culture also needs careful maintenance to grow strong. However, it isnât easy to measure the health of an improvement culture with spreadsheets or sharepoint files. While a plant gives warning signs in multiple ways, a spreadsheet does not. The only way to know if a culture is failing is that the spreadsheet wonât get filled out.
For consultants, bringing a continuous improvement software platform into their repertoire gives them the ability to conduct health checks on their clients without even being in the building. Software keeps track of due dates, engagement and participation rates, giving consultants and improvement leaders added tools to keep growing their culture.

Have you seen the LifeLock commercial about the bank robbery? A group of robbers comes in with baseball bats and demand that everyone get on the floor. The customers ask the uniformed security officer to do something. Instead, he says, “Oh, I’m not a security guard. I’m a security monitor. I only notify people if there’s a robbery.” He looks at the customers and reports, “There’s a robbery.” The narrator asks, "Why monitor a problem if you don't fix it?"

A friend who knows that I am interested in continuous improvement techniques of all sorts was visiting a relative in the ER in a California hospital. She sent me this photo. If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you probably know why this upset me, but I think it is worth listing the reasons it made me cringe.

Presenter: Matthew Cannistraro, Operations Analyst at J.C. Cannistraro
In this webinar, you will learn:
Background of JC Cannistraro and the factors that led to the need for improvement software
The importance of and methods for capturing improvement where it happens
Examples of bottom-up improvement that you can learn from
The role of technology in spreading bottom-up improvement
Actionable advice for launching improvement software in your own organization

Rapid improvement events are an important tool in the Kaizen toolbox. They are great for ensuring energy gets focused on a particularly challenging problem or one that needs to be solved pronto. We’ve seen them produce terrific, long-lasting results. We’ve also seen them devolve into a disorganized mess. Without clear direction and effective communication, the event can become a demoralizing waste of time.
How can you ensure the success of your next rapid improvement event and avoid the pitfalls experienced by so many others? Here’s our best tip – use software to manage the project before, during and after your event. Here is how it can help.

During a typical Gemba Walk, a manager or supervisor visits the place where work gets done. He or she observes as processes and tasks are carried out, asks questions, and reflects on what was seen. After careful consideration, they would ask for (or potentially offer) ideas for improvement or begin a PDSA cycle. This is an effective way for managers to get a first-hand look at what is happening with their team and to get vital feedback.
But could the approach be used to help employees who are not managers get a better understanding of the overall flow of value through the organization and where their work fits in? We believe that it can.

Matthew Cannistraro, of the J.C. Cannistraro company, is one of those leaders and customers. He gave an excellent presentation at last yearâs user conference, a talk that was focused on capturing âbottom upâ improvement ideas in the workplace. The talk was so well received that we asked him to expand upon it for a webinarâ¦ and thatâs coming up on February 23.
I had a brief discussion with Matthew the other day and we captured it as a podcast to preview his webinar titled âThe Intersection of Culture and Technology: Capturing Improvement Where it Happens.â
In our discussion, he starts by introducing himself and his company, a family-owned mechanical contracting company, based in Boston. He was exposed to KaiNexus when they were doing some 5S improvement work and discovered they needed a platform to help track their ideas and progress.

Readers of this blog know that the Lean approach to business management has taken root far outside of the manufacturing sector. It is used by healthcare organizations, software development firms, financial institutions, and even institutes of higher education. The construction industry likewise has benefited from applying and adapting the fundamental principles of Lean. Construction is a unique industry with each project being unlike the last. That is why agile thinking, effective communications, and extensive collaboration are necessary to maximize value.

We are in the continuous improvement business, so it is not surprising that we sometimes talk to HR managers and other leaders who have been sold on the idea that an electronic suggestion box is the way to gather employee ideas for improvement. Physical suggestion boxes have been around probably as long as there have been businesses, so why not modernize the approach by making it digital?
We applaud any attempt to get front-line employees involved in improvement, but our clients have told us that electronic suggestion boxes are not an effective way to capitalize on the collective wisdom of the team. Why? Largely because they do not go far enough in turning thought into action. Here is where they break down.

Mark Graban & Dr. Greg Jacobson
In this episode:
How did you guys meet?
What are some inventive methods to improve senior management visibility and support for continuous improvement (CI)?
How can we sustain improvement activities and prevent slipping back to old habits?
Do we need to have everybody involved in every aspect of our quality improvement efforts? One trainer said we did... but that's not always practical. What should we do?
What are the effective cost control and reduction mechanisms?

Post by Dr. Greg Jacobson, read by Mark Graban
Management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., is the founder and senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., a nonprofit training, publishing, conference, and management research company chartered in August 1997 to advance a set of ideas known as lean production and lean thinking, based initially on Toyotaâs business system. He, along with Daniel T. Jones, founder and Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy in the U.K penned the influential work, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation in 1996. Although much of the material they cover is not new, they present it with a unique structure that rests on five core principles of Lean manufacturing. Although their focus is on the manufacturing sector, these principles can be put to work in other industries including healthcare, construction, higher education and software development.

Wow! The daily lessons served up by the current political climate in the United States just keep coming. I’m quite certain nobody intended to help us gain these insights, but why bypass the opportunity! So here we go.
Some people call their improvement cycle PDCA, as outlined by Walter Shewhart, while others refer to it as PDSA, as evolved by W. Edwards Deming. Whatever the terminology, we often forget that this IS a cycle.
We write it in a linear fashion because that is the way our language operates. P stands for plan, right? But stop and think about it. Is “plan” a noun or a verb? Is it A plan, or TO plan? Understanding this nuanced difference makes all the difference in understanding the cycle.

Our CEO, Dr. Greg Jacobson, has a cartoon hanging in his office. It must be pretty popular, because I found out Mark Graban actually referenced it a few years ago in this post.
The cartoon depicts a medieval king preparing to fight a battle with swords and shields - and a guy selling machine guns. The king is so focused on his next task, he is ignoring the salesman trying to sell him modern weapons, which would easily carry his army to victory if he took a moment to think about it.
This cartoon is funny because of the parallel between this situation, and one that we often come up against in sales. People are often so busy fighting fires that theyâre unable to take a step back and find a solution for the root cause of those fires.

An increasing number of institutes of higher education are introducing the principles of Lean and other continuous improvement methodologies in order to improve efficiency and operational effectiveness. This might be surprising - even a bit controversial - in a sector that doesn’t produce products per se, but the underlying principles of respect for people, incremental change, and the elimination of processes and activities that do not add value absolutely have a place in an educational environment. In higher education, there is an interesting coalition of students, faculty, administrators, public officials and potential employers that all have a stake in achieving the best possible outcomes.

KaiNexus is pretty lucky in that it has a staff of amazingly talented and knowledgeable individuals. Our Vice-President of Improvement & Innovation Services, Mark Graban, is certainly no exception. Graban has over 20 years of experience practicing Lean both in manufacturing and in healthcare, is the author of several books including Lean Hospitals, and is the founder of LeanBlog.org. Recently Jeff Roussel, Vice-President of Sales for KaiNexus, hosted a webinar wherein Graban shared some of his experience and knowledge about Strategy Deployment. You can watch that full webinar, titled Everything You Need to Know About Strategy Deployment, here:
https://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/webinar/strategy-deployment/everything-you-need-to-know

Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA) is an effective improvement technique that helps organizations investigate the root causes of any known problems or potential risks. The corrective action addresses something problematic that has happened, while the preventative action aims to avoid potential future problems.
Corrective actions happen in response to things like product defects, identified waste, or customer complaints. Preventative actions may be applied to potential safety risks, competitive threats, or falling performance indicators.
CAPA software has been developed to help organizations support this management technique. Here are the key advantages it offers.

As a sales executive for KaiNexus, I speak with Lean leaders and continuous improvement gurus daily. Most of them are excited about continuous improvement, but they are frustrated with the lack of supporting technology. However, once they decide to solve the technology problem, the face a new challenge - getting a new tool or platform approved and purchased. This is called the Buyer’s Journey, and it’s a foreign concept for so many people.
Enter KaiNexus.
The first three steps in most of my customer engagements are pretty standard and go something like this:

The 5S technique is part of a broader set of management practices known as visual management or visual control. Although these tools are often used by organizations that employ the Lean management or the Toyota Production System, they can be used by any organization seeking to optimize workspaces and processes. 5S can be implemented without technology to support it, but our clients have found that the digital approach can smooth the process and amplify the results.

Visual management, sometimes called visual control, is the technique of communicating information using visual signals rather than text or written instruction. People process visual images much more quickly than text, so the approach is an excellent way to achieve efficiency and clarity of communications. We often think of huddle boards or Kanban cards when we think about visual management, but it can take many forms. For example, some organizations have different colored uniforms for different teams, others use visual cues to mark where tools should be placed when not in use.

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a rapid improvement cycle is a, "Quality improvement method that identifies, implements and measures changes made to improve a process or a system.” In other words, it is an organized approach to making processes better in short order. You don’t use a rapid improvement cycle to shoot for the moon, but rather to make incremental changes that add up to major success. Each cycle builds on the work done during the last and suddenly that mountain doesn’t seem so hard to climb.

How to Manage Your Improvement Metrics More Efficiently and Effectively
In this webinar, you will learn:
Some of the common mistakes people make when looking at performance metrics and the resulting problems
Simple, but statistically valid and effective methods for creating, maintaining, and reviewing charts over time
When to react and ask “what happened?” when reviewing new data points in a chart
When to stop overreacting to individual data points and improve the overall system, instead
How to integrate this into your use of KaiNexus or for charts you create in Excel

Kaizen events are an effective way to implement significant improvements in short order. They are used to tackle all sorts of issues from workplace organization, to process optimization and everything in between. Because Kaizen events are resource intensive, usually pulling people from their ordinary work for three to five days, it is essential to get the most out of every one. We’ve had lots of in-depth conversations with clients who’ve conducted rapid improvement events of all sorts. Some of them exceeded the goals of the projects, while others didn’t work out very well at all. Here are some of the things our clients have shared that can make all the difference.

Strategy Deployment is a hot topic in continuous improvement circles these days. We’re delighted to see that because effective strategy deployment can make the difference between reaching the goals of the organization in the expected time frame and failing to achieve the breakthrough objectives. Of course, strategy deployment isn’t easy and few companies really excel at the practice. Strategy deployment software has been developed to help provide a structure for the practice and keep organizations on track. We’ve had lots of productive conversations with leaders about how strategy deployment software can help smooth the path to success. Here are the questions that we get asked most often.

A post by Jeff Roussel, read by Mark Graban
Every time we walk into a facility and see a Kaizen board, we are reminded about the excitement and sense of anticipation that most teams have when the Kaizen board is first introduced. But very often, when we ask front line employees about them the response is tepid at best.
There may still be huddle meetings where the progress of each improvement is discussed, and a card might get moved from one stage to another from time to time, but the initial excitement wanes quickly and the whole thing becomes a chore.
In many cases, we look a little closer and see that no new improvement work has been added for months or that work is stalled out with no movement in sight.

When I sat down to write about sustaining innovations, the word that popped into my mind was “entropy.” While entropy is a scientific term related to the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity, it is also used to refer to a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder. Entropy is a very real thing in organizations. Practices are implemented and improvements deployed, yet over time, things seem to revert to the way they were always done.

A common mistake companies make when rolling out a new culture of continuous improvement is to fail to provide leadership training to the people leading it. When you're responsible for leading a cultural transformation, there are a lot of unique leadership skills that you need to employ. You need to be firm and empathetic, have high but reasonable expectations, communicate effectively, be present - the list goes on and on. It's a hard balance to strike, particularly for people who don't have a lot of experience in a leadership position to fall back on. As such, many leaders cave under the pressure and are either too hesitant to be effective or become huge jerks that no one likes or respects.

Once organizations realize the value of daily continuous improvement and learn to leverage employee ideas for innovation, they often turn their focus on how to accelerate the pace of improvement.
There are many ways that teams can get the most out of their improvement efforts. Workflow software is one tool that helps companies manage more improvement projects at the same time and pave a faster path to tangible results.

There’s an interesting thing about the definition of the word culture - it shares a root with the word “cultivate,” which means, “to foster the growth of; to improve by labor, care, or study.” Cultivation requires intention, action, and attention. Kaizen culture does as well.

Earlier in the day, at one of her company’s regular monthly meetings, she decided to offer a $100 bill to the first employee who could name all four of the company’s top-level strategic goals. What she got was crickets. Not a single person could name them all and few could come up with any of them at all. Ouch.

A blog post by Matt Banna
Think about all the points of contact that customers go through with your company throughout their time in your sales pipeline and then as customers. Smart organizations realize that every one of these points of contact, frequently called touchpoints, are extremely important and valuable. Whether it's the first time you talk to someone, a customer changing their service, or a prospect buying your product, every touchpoint a person goes through shapes the way they feel about your company and influences their lifetime value.

Kaizen events are a big deal. They pull people away from their regular jobs for a number of days; they require training, leadership must make necessary resources available, and internal or external facilitation is needed. Not every improvement project should involve a Kaizen event. But there are some situations that call out for them. To determine if a Kaizen event is the right approach to a particular situation, ask yourself these questions.

A blog post from 12/30/16 by Mark Graban
Toyota famously changed automobile manufacturing forever by focusing on continuous improvement, particularly on the never-ending process of waste elimination. Over the years, eight specific types of waste were identified. They are now referred to as the 8 wastes of Lean.
While Lean was originally developed in the automotive manufacturing sector, every business experiences waste in one form or another. In fact, if you keep your eyes open, you’ll notice waste is all around you.
Here are a few examples that our team has observed:

One of the many things we love about this time of year is the opportunity to reflect back on what we’ve accomplished (or survived) over the past twelve months. It’s also a great moment to set the stage for success in the year to come. If you practice the Lean management approach or plan to do so in 2017, one way to ensure that you get the most out of your improvement and waste reduction efforts is to invest in Lean software. Doing so gives you a number of advantages that will amplify your results and ease the path to achieving your most important goals. Here are some of them.

Continuous Improvement Resolutions for the New Year
As 2016 draws to a close, our thoughts turn to what’s ahead in the coming year. Many of us vow to hit the gym or lay off the Doritos. We might even resolve to be a little kinder and more generous in the months to come.
This is a good time of year to make some business-related resolutions as well.
If you are reading this blog, continuous improvement is probably something that matters to you, so we’d like to offer some ideas for continuous improvement New Year’s resolutions.

Presented by Jeff Roussel, Hosted and Moderated by Mark Graban
In this webinar, you will learn:
- The importance of measuring and reporting the ROI of continuous improvement
- What metrics to use to measure your success
- How to report your impact in a way that senior leaders will care about
- How to justify increasing your budget for continuous improvement

Hosted by Mark Graban of KaiNexus, presented by Tania Lyon from St. Clair Hospital.
In this webinar, you will learn:
The preconditions for a successful rollout
The levers for driving KaiNexus adoption
How to develop and rely on the organizational helpchain to manage training
Tania Lyon
Dr. Lyon has spent the last 7 years leading St. Clair Hospital, a large award-winning community hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, through a “lean” transformation as their first Director of Organizational Performance Improvement. She has trained over 1600 hospital employees in Toyota principles and methods. Her own background in Lean healthcare comes from 5 years with the nonprofit Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) where she helped to develop their nationally acclaimed curriculum for health care professionals and coached lean improvement efforts in a variety of healthcare settings. Dr. Lyon is also interested in Lean Healthcare applications for low resource settings like hospitals in Malawi and Haiti. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and her BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from U.C. Berkeley and has two charming daughters who have thus far resisted all efforts to apply the Toyota Way to their rooms.

In episode #10 of our series, Greg Jacobson, MD & Mark Graban talk answer questions such as:
- What would you tell high school juniors about healthcare improvement?
- Why can it be hard for some experienced leaders to understand or embrace Lean?
- How does one make time for documenting processes?
- How can we identify the leading indicators (daily measures) at Gemba that contribute to lagging indicators (monthly or quarterly measures)?
- What methodology would you recommend for an organization to get back to black from red, financially?

In this webinar, you will learn:
How communication breaks down silos and to create a cross functional effort for continuous improvement
The value of communication when it comes to educating vs. cheerleading
How to leverage PMO and CI efforts for key strategic projects
Get a snapshot of a new innovation team model that merges the best elements of CI and a PMO
Originally Aired: September 20, 2016 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT
Length: 1 hour
Hosted By: Mark Graban and Erin Edwards

Webinar presented by Harry Kenworthy of QPIC, hosted by Mark Graban and KaiNexus on September 13, 2016.
Ten Commandments for Lean in Government (and Beyond)
In this webinar, you will learn:
- The top 10 commandments for creating a Lean culture
- The benefits of creating Dynamic Daily Data Collection for greater employee engagement
- The only 3 things Lean leaders truly need to do
- The "True North" principles in a Thinking People System (TPS)
- How to start a Lean organizational journey
About the Presenter:
Harry Kenworthy is Principal and Manager of the Quality and Productivity Improvement Center (QPIC, LLC). He worked with Dr. W. Edwards Deming in 1983-85 on a series of seminars, and has spoken at over 90 conferences on Quality, Productivity, Lean, and Six Sigma. He has been published several magazines including Quality Progress, Purchasing, and Government Finance Review. Harry also had working relationships with Dr. Joseph Juran and Dorian Shainin.
He was one of the first practitioners to apply Lean in the Government sector in the mid-90âs. Harryâs consulting work has included numerous Government processes that have been improved by removing waste, reducing costs, or increasing revenues in a variety of operational steps while reducing overall process cycle times and improving customer service.
Harry is a founder of the Connecticut Quality Council and chaired CBIAâs (Connecticut Business and Industry Association) Manufacturing Council, a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner from 1989-1991, and has held a CT Professional Engineer license and a Certified Quality Engineer designation.

For the Want of a System Better Than a Sticky Note, a Car Sale Was Lost
How did a salesperson losing a sale remind Mark Graban of problems with using sticky notes to track employee ideas in the workplace?

In episode #9 of our series, Greg & Mark talk answer questions such as:
- You're busy guys, where was your last vacation?
- What book have you most recently read?
- What key company culture promotes continuous improvement? - What's one element?
- For more than 10 years, our full time OE group has followed a ground up approach. A combination of the competitive climate in our industry and some recent success we've had with rapid kaizen have helped senior leaders see that they need Lean education so they can be active lean leaders. What do you recommend we do (and avoid doing) to train them well?
- I was wondering if you, Dr. Jacobson, or Mark Graban could expand on your comment âhealth care is a decade or more behind many other high-risk industries in its attention to ensuring basic safety.â Some say -- Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States... possibly 251,454 per year. Has any other high risk industry ever had a fraction of that many deaths? I understand that this number is an estimate, but I feel healthcare is far behind a decade. Would love to hear more.
- How can we measure the level of employeesâ engagement? What measures can we use? Is there an assessment tool?

Presented by Mark Graban on July 27, 2016 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT
In this webinar, you will learn:
How organizations use Strategy Deployment (or Hoshin Planning) to create alignment and focus
The iterative PDSA-based cycles of this management approach
Four key hypotheses that senior leaders make during the annual cycles and ongoing reviews
How KaiNexus can support these methods to better create alignment and give better visibility around goals, actions, and progress

Read by Jeff Roussel, VP of Sales: If you are striving to become a Lean organization, waste elimination is probably near the top of your list. In fact, Lean practitioners have identified very specific types of waste, known collectively as the 8 Wastes of Lean. Certain types of waste are really easy to spot and fix, while others can remain unnoticed. We thought it might be helpful to share some practical examples of how each type of waste occurs in business and in the larger world.

A KaiNexus Webinar by Mark Jaben, MD. Hosted by Mark Graban on June 28, 2016.
The Science Behind Resistance to Change:
What the Research Says & How it Helps You
June 28 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT
In this webinar, you will learn:
How people form opinions about the validity of continuous improvement
The neuroscience behind why it's so hard to change minds
Why simply getting "buy-in" doesn't always work
What you need to do to sway opinions, increase engagement, and spread improvement
About the Host:
Dr. Mark Jaban is an Emergency Physician with over 25 years of clinical experience. His initial immersion into Lean came in 2008 when he had the opportunity to test Lean methodology while leading implementation efforts at a hospital in New Zealand. Observing successes and struggles as he continued to observe these concepts led Mark to delve further into why this stuff works.
Mark has written extensively about what it really takes to engage people in change efforts and has presented internationally on these topics.

In episode #8 of our series, Greg Jacobson, MD & Mark Graban talk about topics including:
- Who were you rooting for in the NBA Finals? (fun topic to get started)
- What are the ultimate challenges to have a successful Lean Journey?
- How is the deployment approach different for a transformational change vs incremental change?
- To influence change in a hierarchical organization like government, where in the org chart should the continuous improvement team sit?
- What is the best means of assessing employee engagement levels in organizations?
- if your department is spending 90% of its time "keeping the lights on", how do you start a continuous improvement culture so that you can reduce it to less than 80%
- What is the most effective way to implement a daily lean management system?
- Does Lean drive supply chain excellence?

In episode #7 of our series, Greg & Mark talk about:
- Lean and Kaizen in manufacturing vs other settings, such as retail and healthcare
- How to help leaders change their behaviors and managerial approaches when it's out of sync with Lean?
- How does pointing fingers and blaming affect morale?
- What's the role of Change Management?
See more webinars at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars

Presented by Karen Skinner & David Skinner, Hosted by KaiNexus & Mark Graban on May 17, 2016
Learn more at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
In this webinar, you will learn:
Trends in service delivery innovation for professional service firms
How Lean can support critical innovations in pricing, project management, and knowledge management
How a culture of continuous improvement can support innovation
Where to start and how to avoid typical pitfalls
Join us as we talk to Karen Dunn Skinner and David Skinner of Gimbal about how they’re using LeanLegal™ to create a foundation for performance excellence in law firms and legal departments. Using the legal industry as a case study, we’ll discuss how you can use Lean to create a strong base for change. We’ll talk about some of the problems Gimbal’s clients have encountered implementing Lean and process improvement, and conclude with a discussion of some of the possible ways forward for organizations embarking on a Lean initiative.

In this webinar, you will learn:
The value of a "behavior based," rather than "tools based," management system
The ideal Lean behaviors that drive sustainable results
How to find balance between enterprise alignment, continuous improvement, and cultural enablement - and the Lean behaviors that drive all three
How to develop scientific thinking through the Toyota Kata approach, and how this leads to the ideal behaviors
How the KaiNexus platform supports this management system through strategy deployment, virtual huddle boards, and Kata

- Some of the defining characteristics of successful Lean leaders
- Three basic assumptions that differentiate Lean CEOs and leaders
- Pivotal moments for Lean leaders and their organizations
In this webinar, author, speaker, and consultant Jacob Stoller will dive into the three basic assumptions about information process, and people that differentiate top lean leaders from conventional business leaders. Join us as Jacob highlights pivotal moments where influential leaders changed the history of their companies.

From a podcast on February 16, 2016 with Mark Graban & Greg Jacobson
How To Get Buy-In For Improvement
In this webinar, you will learn:
Reasons why people don’t “buy in” to change
How leaders can better understand the causes of that apparent resistance to change
Strategies that can be used to increase buy-in for staff, managers, and executives.
People often complain that their employees (or their leaders) aren’t “buying in” to an improvement methodology. Or, specific improvement ideas languish because somebody doesn’t “buy in.”
In this webinar, Greg and Mark will explore the issue of buy-in. What are some common reasons for a “lack of buy-in?” Is it accurate to think about “buying” and “selling” ideas in the workplace? What are some strategies and tactics to increase the acceptance of and participation in specific changes and broader initiatives like Lean and continuous improvement?

Yes, Lean can help improve both efficiency and quality. At least he got that right, instead of incorrectly saying that Lean is only about efficiency or productivity or cost.
But, the error is in not thinking that Lean and the Toyota Production System are not also methods for continuous improvement and innovation. We have many KaiNexus customers who demonstrate daily how creative and innovative they are with Lean and Kaizen methods.
We can probably learn something from Google, but we shouldn't miss or ignore what Toyota can teach us about innovation and improvement.

To see the webinar:
http://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/practical-problem-solving/webinar
Using Practical Problem Solving to Spread Kaizen: Going Slow to Go Fast
In this webinar, you will learn:
The origins of the "Practical Problem Solving" approach and the connections to PDSA
How a formal problem solving methodology can give a big boost to your Lean or continuous improvement efforts
Why root cause analysis is more complicated than it might seem and why problem solving isn't always linear or straightforward
How to avoid jumping to conclusions about problems or jumping to solutions
The difference in mindset around "countermeasures" versus solutions
How to develop your problem solving skills and coach others
Webinar host Jon Miller co-founded the lean consulting and training firm Gemba Research in 1998, which merged with Kaizen Institute in 2011. Jon has led dozens of lean transformation projects in a wide range of industries and has helped thousands of people across 20+ countries understand and apply Toyota Production System principles. He co-authored the Shingo Award-winning book, Creating a Kaizen Culture.
Originally Aired: January 12, 2016 at 2p EDT
Length: 1 hour
Hosted By: Jon Miller and Mark Graban

See this blog post by Mark Graban:
http://blog.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/practical-problem-solving/why-you-should-learn-about-practical-problem-solving-in-this-webinar/webinar/why
To register for the webinar:
http://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/practical-problem-solving/webinar/signup

This appeared as a blog post titled "Happiness Is Not The Goal Of Employee Engagement Activities" by Maggie Millard
http://blog.kainexus.com/employee-engagement/employee-engagement-activities/happiness-is-not-the-goal-of-employee-engagement-activities

We recently hosted a webinar called "Ask Us Anything" in which we asked people to, well, ask us anything. It was so popular that we hardly made a dent in the number of awesome questions everyone submitted.
So, we've been answering more questions in a series of videos (see our playlist: https://youtu.be/GHnUsV_UYoo?list=PLscA9mcmPxeDXL5HdKKDosfXFoc4X3STO
Watch this recording to hear us talk about:
Informal problem solving methods that are effective with the front line staff
Rolling out technology along with a methodology and leadership behaviors. What happens if you get a huge flood of ideas at first?
How can continuous improvement, in the form of Lean, or Lean practitioners become part of the strategy or the decision-making process of high level management?
Considering a company with a Balanced Scorecard and KPI in place, what are your recommendations to define the most effective connection with Lean?
How to help move the executive team from "I support" to "I commit"?
Best advice for coaching leadership towards an environment that promotes respect and trust for people in turn giving the people the foundation to bring ideas forward safely.

Webinar - How Leadership Commitment and A Systematic Approach Spread Improvement
A webinar hosted by KaiNexus, presented by Karen Kiel-Rosser, Vice President / Chief Quality Officer at Mary Greeley Medical Center and Ron Smith, a Process Improvement Coordinator.
Does your organization struggle with engaging everybody in daily continuous improvement? Is it difficult to figure out how to combine formal improvement events, projects, and "WorkOuts" while engaging all employees to bring forward their ideas? Are you unsure how to spread improvement methodologies across departments?
In this webinar, you will learn:
- How MGMC has combined Lean tools and methodologies with a "managing for daily improvement" approach
- How leadership and technology enable and support successful improvement methodologies
- MGMC's vision for leaders getting everybody engaged in improvement
- How MGMC has systematically (and successfully) spread continuous improvement methodologies across the hospital over the past 12 months
- Why it's important to engage leaders and to educate them about improvement and the role they need to play
Mary Greeley Medical Center (MGMC), a 220 bed acute care facility in Ames, Iowa, has received "Gold" level recognition in the Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence (IRPE) program, the top honor in the IRPE program (the state level Malcolm Baldrige award).

When I first joined the KaiNexus team in 2011, we were just coming to market and had no paying customers. The vision of our co-founders, Dr. Greg Jacobson and Matt Paliulis, was compelling and they had taken significant steps toward bringing KaiNexus into the world.
Last month, we had our first ever KaiNexus User Conference in Austin. We've grown to the point where we had about 30 customers join us to learn from each other. The map, below, shows the home locations represented by the attendees.

Do you have any burning questions about continuous improvement? What about leadership, or employee engagement, or how to manage innovation and improvement? Curious about what continuous improvement software is, or what it does?
Tune in to this webinar for answers.
In feedback about past webinars, people often comment that there should be "more time for Q&A."
In the spirit of the popular "Ask Me Anything" series, we're going to conduct a webinar that is built around your questions - submitted in advance or submitted live. If you have questions about continuous improvement, kaizen, Lean, or any other topics, tune in for this unique webinar.

Topics:
- how to discuss ideas constructively with employees
- how to prioritize ideas (and if that's even necessary)
- how to assign responsibility for improvement work
- how to create time for improvement
- how to track improvements

Originally Aired: May 15, 2014
Mark Graban, Suz Kaprich, Dr. Greg Jacobson
This webinar covers:
The background and goals of the WorkOut methodology, based on the "GE Work-Out" Model
The method used in KaiNexus WorkOuts
The process and ROI of the WorkOut recently completed at Mary Greeley Medical Center
Excellent opportunities for improvement identified by the Mary Greeley WorkOut team
Q&A

We’re really looking forward to the webinar that Dan Markovitz will be presenting on October 13, based on his new book Building the Fit Organization. We hope you’ll join us - register today at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars.

http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
From September 2015
Making Time for For Continuous Improvement
Hosted By: Mark Graban and Greg Jacobson
In this webinar, we will share proven techniques that help you and your organization bridge the gap between getting those ideas for improvement, and actually making measurable change.
The dangers of neglecting to follow through on employee improvement ideas
Techniques for capturing more ideas for improvement
How to coach people to implement more ideas
The metrics that matter and how to measure them
The value of sharing improvements

Read this post:
http://www.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/resources-for-continuous-improvement/continuous-improvement-podcast
Get more information about our podcasts at http://www.kainexus.com/podcasts

http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
From August 2015
Making Time for For Continuous Improvement
Duration: 1 hour
Making_Time_for_CI_Webinar_CoverTopics: Leadership, Culture of Continuous Improvement
Hosted By: Mark Graban and Greg Jacobson
Learn about how you can make more time for continuous improvement for yourself and your staff by using continuous improvement software to:
Empower employees
Streamline communication
Increase efficiency
Improve visibility

From the KaiNexus blog, a post by Maggie Millard: Are You Creating a Monster with Your Continuous Improvement Technology?
http://blog.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement-software/creating-a-monster-with-continuious-improvement-technology

From June 2014
Leadership Behaviors that Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement
Watch this free webinar to learn:
Leadership_behaviors_WebinarWhat you should be doing to create a culture of continuous improvement
How to encourage the identification, testing, evaluation, and sharing of improvements
Best practices for collaborating on improvement
When to get involved… and when to get out of the way

From March 2014
What's the ROI of Continuous Improvement?
Duration: 1 hour
Topics: ROI, Continuous Improvement
Hosted By: Greg Jacobson and Mark Graban
ROIofcontinuousimprovementHow to measure the ROI of continuous improvement
How to communicate that ROI with your executives
Hidden places to look for additional ROI
The role of software in achieving, calculating, and communicating ROI

Originally Aired: May 12, 2015
Length: 1 hour
Hosted By: Mark Graban (KaiNexus VP of Customer Success)
Presenter: Norman Bodek
In this webinar:
Lessons from Norman Bodek's 80+ visits to Japan
The "9th Waste" of Lean
The role of managers in creating a culture of continuous improvement
The importance of personal growth plans and self reliance
How the "Harada Method" furthers these goals of self reliance and Kaizen
Join us for a very special conversation with a Lean legend, Norman Bodek. Norman worked with, translated, and published the books of Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, credited as creators of the Toyota Production System.

Originally Aired: April 14, 2015 at 1p EDT
See the webinar archive, videos, and slides at http://www.kainexus.com/webinars
Listen to this webinar now to learn:
How to spread continuous improvement throughout your organization
Why it's important to spread improvement ideas beyond the team that discovered them
Real life examples of how organizations overcome common barriers to spread
It's one thing for continuous improvement to thrive within your team of improvement specialists... it's a whole different ballgame when you're trying to spread it throughout your organization. Attend this webinar to hear our expert tips for spreading sustainable continuous improvement.

Originally Aired: March 17, 2015
Hosted by Mark Graban, Guest is Jamie Flinchbaugh
How To Drive Improvement Behaviors To Increase Performance Gains
- Learn how the improvement behaviors of your staff directly determine your results
- See why most leaders fail to get the behaviors they need from employees
- Learn how to design an actionable strategy for deliberate behavior change - on any budget
Visit http://www.kainexus.com/webinars to see slides and more

Presented June 15, 2015 by Mark Graban & Jason Coons
See slides
http://info.kainexus.com/continuous-improvement/culture-of-continuous-
improvement/a-system-wide-approach-to-driving-process-improvement/webi
nar
A System-Wide Approach to Driving Process Improvement
Get actionable advice from lessons learned in Kettering Health
Network's 5 year process improvement journey
Hear how Kettering's system-wide approach to projects, training, and
daily problem solving led to $2.6 million of financial impact last
year
Learn about KaiNexus, the continuous improvement software platform
that spread continuous improvement by enabling change management and
accountability within the system

Presented July 16, 2015 by Mark Graban & Joe Swartz.
Why coaching matters to your organization, leaders, and staff
Practical methods for coaching staff and leaders
How to develop people to be better improvement facilitators
Numerous coaching scenarios and examples from Franciscan St. Francis Health and other organizations and other industries
Key coaching fundamentals used at Franciscan